Category: Marketing Strategy

Don’t Just Show Up – Engage! #JustStartToday You have registered for the trade show or conference. Maybe you have a booth. You’ve done your signage and have your business cards printed. After all, the top companies and brightest minds in their industry will be present to ensure qualified participants. You are ready, right? No, – not right. The potential new clients will not seek you out just because you showed up and put some signage in your booth. There are many awareness activities that occur around the trade show time; taking advantage of these options will ensure you see a greater return on your trade show investment. About 80% of …

The Importance of Marketing Strategy and Messaging Outside of a company’s product or service, the number one most important primary call-to-action elements for success are establishing marketing goals and messaging. This strategic step establishes the building blocks that lead to revenue, branding, and competitive edge. In this blog, I will give you and your team some things to think about so you can #JustStartToday with your strategy and messaging to move forward with success. 1. What are your company’s goals? Having this discussion between you and your team will force you to articulate the goals of your organization and what you are trying to accomplish. Based on these results, you …

#JustStartToday: Twitter Quick Starts Twitter – The “Micro Blog” platform. With Twitter, you can easily share, post updates, and let your personality show. I find Twitter to be more personal and a platform to develop social media ‘friendships’. Why use Twitter? – It’s used by both businesses and people to share content and build your brand. In this blog, we’ll talk about the maintenance of your existing Twitter account. Following these five steps below, you will easily #JustStartToday. Number 1 Tools: Use a tool to manage your Twitter activity. A tool helps you manage your content, schedule your tweets, and interactions and engagements. It’s much easier using a tool than …

Do you “Resolution”? Instead #JustStartToday The turn to the New Year prompts a common practice of making a resolution for the upcoming year. A common topic this time of year – “What is your New Years Resolution?” My answer – “NONE”. It’s not because I’m not driven or have a lack of imagination. I just don’t do resolutions when the calendar changes one or two numbers in the year. I don’t believe that a change in the calendar is something to wait for in order to start something new in my life. I did a quick Google search this morning on “do you do New Years resolutions”. Eight of the …

Social Media Sharing Best Practices: Be Mindful and Patient! Every once in a while, actually almost daily, there is story that hits social media that strikes a chord with many people and the jump-on-the-social-media-bandwagon starts. Be careful when making your decision to jump on that bandwagon – not everything is as it seems. There is netiquette and keep it in mind. Although we do know that “not everything is as it seems”, irresponsible sharing happens over and over. A couple of weeks ago it was the Facebook Premium story. This week it was the aunt suing her nephew. Stories like this hit social media and many jump in to share …

Is High Tech Marketing different than Just B2B Marketing? My specialty is marketing for high performance and technical computing companies who are selling servers, storage, networking, big data, cloud, and services. Their customers use the super-high end resources to do things like mapping the human genome or running complex, data-intensive climate models to improve forecasting and protect against disaster. The cool things my customers are doing with technology is one of the best parts of my job. So I got to thinking, is marketing to this type of customer different than marketing in other industries? I’ve decided the answer is yes. Now, before I go further into how different (and …

Content Marketing and Social Media – JUST START! I listened to a very informative webinar on content marketing from Curata. They had recognized marketers talk about their strategies and experience. I use many of these strategies in my work with you, so it was (1) good to validate my thoughts from recognized experts and (2) the organization of the webinar led to taking notes to share with you! Point 1: Just Start I know its hard to get started with content marketing. And I think many of us think “content marketing” is a data sheet or a white paper, but it’s more than that. It’s every touch you have to …

Customer Service – Yes, it’s as simple as a smile. Customer service, communication, human courtesy, manners. Should they not all go hand in hand? My answer is yes! I was raised with the edict of using your manners…please, thank you, hold the door open for others. Are manners gone? I think the same is true for communication and customer service. A frustrating event happened to me which got me thinking about this blog. I was having some work done at my house, and the company never showed up. They didn’t even call to say they wouldn’t make it. I had to initiate the phones calls to determine why the repairman …

Infographics – How we read today Infographics are hot, hot, hot. It is easy to find the important information, there are not a lot of words to read, and the pictures are pretty. Today’s blog is inspired by Kendra Lee’s of the KLA Group Weekly Sales Tip: “Create a one-page infographic. Reps, techs, and consultants need something eye-catching and informative that they can share with customers. Infographics are a comprehensive, well-designed visual that reinforces confidence and pride in working with you.” With the infographic trend, hundreds are being created, launched, and promoted online every day. They have the opportunity to be viral (as viral as a business infographic can be!) …

Just Write… Write, just a little bit, every day. Easier said than done, isn’t it? And when I say write, just a little bit, every day I’m not talking about my diary. I’m talking about my blog. I believe (and almost started this paragraph with this saying) ‘life gets in the way’. There are so many things I feel I have ‘committed’ to and the list keeps growing. So then why does something as important as my blog consistently fall to the bottom of the list? It’s easy to write because it’s on topics I know and am passionate about. I sometimes get stuck thinking of a topic, but with …